The Details

The selected writeups are the 4 most recently created with at least oneC! and reputation between 12 and 20, not inclusive (The cutoffs were originally between 7 and 14 according to arieh, later 15 and 20, later 16 and 26, and most recently 18 and 26).

There's no fancyalgorithm for picking them it simply goes by reverse writeup id#. Since there's only a 4-vote window, it's quite possible for CotC to reach back several weeks from time to time.

512 characters of the writeup are selected. Then the last whitespace and word (probably a fragment) is chopped off. If a hard link or pipe link is open then that is chopped off as well.

Curiosities

On April Fool's day 2002, the code was apparently changed to show the 3 oldest writeups with the requisite reputation. The code is still there, so they could do this to us again at any time. Beware.